A few fun pictures.....

a nice picture with our shark glyphs

 a crazy hair day picture

a "We're crazy about sharks." picture!

Last Friday we completed a geometry lesson on iPads.  The students enjoyed making different shapes and then dividing them into equal parts.  They also got a chance to get creative.  

These two students were 

making as many triangles as they could.  

 We worked in partners.  The students picked up the ins and outs of the app quickly.

If you would like to use this app at home, you can get it for free!  Just go to the apple app store and search for "geoboard."  It works well on an iPad or iPhone.

Leaders are Readers Day was a great success in our classroom!  Thanks so much to Mr. Dave, Mrs. Prims, Mr. Fadlovich, Mrs. Hubbartt, Mr. Urbaitis, and Mr. Wheeler!  All of our readers did an awesome job sharing interesting books with the class.

We are reading and writing poems in class.  Each student will have a set of poems to show you at Open House.  The students are really enjoying this unit and are very successful at writing the poems.

In math we finished our subtraction unit.  We will continue to practice addition and subtraction through the rest of the year.  This would also be a great idea for home practice!  Just write a few problems down for your child to solve.  I would suggest practicing throughout the summer so that your child is ready (and remembering!) for next year.

We planted seeds on April 1st. Ask your child what we planted and where the plants will be going.  We are also learning about plants and will continue through the next few weeks.

Our school is holding a recess equipment fundraiser at Domino's.  Our day is Monday.  When you call to order a pizza, please give them my name.  The class with the most orders will win a pizza party:)

We are going strong in the fourth quarter!!  There is still lots of learning to be done!!  It will be a great time!

Conferences this week!

 Hello!  Today I'm sharing a few pictures from our subtraction work in math.  

We played a game called Flip It.  

 We worked on our own to create numbers and subtraction problems.

 We really had to think to remember how to set up a problem and then subtract.

 When we were finished we checked with another student to see if we agreed with them.  If not, we worked together to solve the problem.  If that didn't work, we got help from Mrs. Tussing.

The kids did a great job!!

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone this week at conferences!  

The students have been getting ready and are excited!

Happy (snowy) March!!

Hello!  The students have been busy working in our classroom!

They completed a biography unit recently and the work went home on Friday.  They had fun at the end of the unit creating a fictional pirate biography.  It tied in perfectly with their pirate music concert.  Speaking of music concerts, the students did so well during the rehearsals and performance.  (Pirate) Hats off to them!

Last week in language arts we shared and discussed folk tales, and next week we will move on to fables.  We continue to write in our journals and write in our language lessons. The students are enjoying their introduction to cursive.  (We just learn the lower case alphabet in second grade.)

We are starting subtraction in math!  This is a concept that we will stick with for a while.  We will also continue to improve on our addition skills.  Students still need to practice their addition and subtraction facts to 20 for our timed tests.  Of course, it will also help them to be able to do the harder addition and subtraction!

CogAT testing starts on March 5th and continues on the 6th and 7th.  We start our test in the computer lab at 9:00 each day.  I shared practice questions from all the tests with the students on Thursday and Friday.  They are ready to go!

I took pictures when we were working on our portfolios.  Unfortunately, technology got the best of me this time and the pictures didn't work out.  Think of a happy hum of activity and children looking over and sharing their work.  These portfolios will be a main component of our student-led conferences.  You received a note home about your conference time.  If you are unable to make it, please let me know so that we can reschedule.  Student-led conferences are an awesome celebration and learning experience for the kids!

Finally, I sent a note home about Leaders are Readers Day.  We are looking forward to parents and other leaders to come visit our classroom in April.  Please fill out the form in the next week if you or another leader are able to attend.  We are looking forward to an interesting and exciting day!

Hello!  We have been learning a lot in January!  The pictures you will see throughout this post are when we are doing Read to Self.  Everyone's making improvement in reading and it's so wonderful to read and discuss books with the students.  During Language Core, we are working on comparing and contrasting.  We started with nonfiction learning about animals.  We are now working on fairy tales and have enjoyed different versions of Jack and the Beanstalk, The Three Little Pigs, and Cinderella.  We will be finishing the unit this week and starting biographies next week.

 In writing the students wrote their own version of The Three Little Pigs.  We will be taking that writing through the writing process together.  Then we will publish our final copies.  They will be in our classroom library for us to share and I will put them out at conferences.

 In math we are continuing to learn about different ways to show numbers and place value.  We are working towards adding three digit numbers.  The students love math and it is amazing to talk about their math thinking with them.  We will also strengthen our focus on having the kids explain their math thinking in writing.

 In science we are learning about rocks.  This includes the layers of the Earth, different kinds of rocks, volcanoes and more.  The students seem to really like science!  Cheers went up when I said we were starting a science unit and learning about rocks:)

February promises to be very exciting and full of learning!  Of course, we can't forget about our party on Valentine's Day.  I will be sending a class list home soon so that you can start on the valentines.  It's amazing how excited the students get about Valentine's Day!!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!!  Hopefully you are all enjoying the season with your family!  Before we get back to school I would like to share with you photos from our fun Winter Party.  Thanks to Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Prims for organizing our party!  Also thanks to Mrs. Hendricks and Mrs. Wheeler who helped make the party terrific!

This friendly guy turned out to be a challenging and fun game.  Those holes look so easy to throw a styrofoam snowball through.....but they are not.

The kids really tried to get the snowballs in!  Lots of concentrating...

 Another great game that we played was pin the nose on the snowman.  This also proved to be lots of fun.

 As you know by now, one of our crafts was to make beautiful button snowflakes.  The kids' creations were fantastic and unique!

For our second craft we used foam and wood to make some wintery decorations.  The kids loved these!

I am looking forward to getting back to school 

and seeing all the students again!